Posts under ‘technology’

Key to Apple’s surging popularity have been the ease of use of its products and software, and seamless integration between its devices and services. Arguably unique in the personal computer industry, Apple exercises strict controls over every element of its product line.  This control over both the hardware and software used in its computers, peripherals [...]

Websites, iPad apps, accounting systems, and the software running on your home wireless router are all the result of an often considerable investment of time, money, skill and effort.  In return, their creators are typically rewarded with a bundle of intellectual property rights.  One of the most important of these is copyright, which protects the [...]

The London riots brought chaos to the city for a few nights, and at times the looting and violence spread faster than news sites could keep track of them, leaving many to turn to social media for their source of news. Often TV coverage became unreliable, and the BBC played looping footage of past events, [...]

Last year, Google introduced its ‘Google Instant Search’, a new feature that displays suggested results as soon as you start typing your search phrase.  The service also sports improved ‘predictive’ search queries – much like predictive text on mobile phones – for example when you start to type ‘Apple’ into Google, it may suggest ‘apple [...]

Further progress was made in the Newzbin saga last week when the High Court ordered BT to prevent its subscribers from accessing the website.  You may recall that the site had hopped abroad to the Seychelles, escaping the reach of the UK courts (or so it thought).  However, despite its emigration, the Motion Picture Association [...]

The internet revolutionised the way people could discover and share information, but as technology has developed, the volume of information which can be shared online, and the variety of its application have broadened significantly.  When the bandwidth available to typical internet users was sufficient, there was an explosion in online sharing of music through services [...]

While we had made good progress, we have now decided to park the Innovation Group for the moment to help the Islington Chamber of Commerce push ahead with the Camden & Islington business awards on October 27th.  We will pick it back up when the Chamber is ready.  To find out more about the 2011 [...]

Large technology businesses including Google, Facebook and eBay are fighting a new law in France (Google translation) that would require internet companies to keep user data for a year. The French Association of Internet Community Services (ASIC) is to challenge the law infront of the State Council. Data must be retained so that it can [...]

A Californian corporation has been contracted by the US Central Government to develop an “online persona management service”. Apparently, they want to detect terrorists and extremists overseas.  One way they intend to do this is by creating different online identities and manipulating social media sites and blog posts. The service being developed will allow one [...]

The Data Protection Act (DPA), which is the backdrop for privacy protection in Europe, was born in the pre- web2.0 era; before the innovation of social media. New challenges are being posed by new technologies and one study (by RAND) commissioned by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) last year concluded that, “in an increasingly global, [...]